This is a guest post by a Syrian friend who wishes to remain anonymous. The purpose of such a post is to showcase the side of the Syrian revolution that none of us stop to think about. We all go into the political rhetoric of what the Syrian revolution means to us. We never stop at what the revolution means to its people.

This is a story of one of them.

I opened my room’s window today, just like every other day.

But today had a different taste, a different vision, even a different sound.

I sat and tried to write something. I couldn’t. I wrote and wrote but was never convinced in what came up on paper. So I left the writing process simmer as usual. I had no idea what I could say after 366 days.

It’s been a year on the revolution of a people, a revolution on tyranny, on underdevelopment and poverty. It is a revolution on a barren life, with all the intricacies entailed. We’re sick of dryness – the land has to breathe. The bodies of our sons will open up like the most beautiful of flowers and glow in sublime colors under the sun.

It’s been a year and I still hear of cities and villages I had no idea existed on a map. It’s been a year and we’ve started to know Syria anew, as if we were newly born. Throughout this year, we were surprised by some regions that we always considered irrelevant such as the Syrian countryside, which we always considered beneath us, which we always misjudged along with its people. The revolution started and grew out from the countryside and spread to all the regions of my country, leading to beautiful protests with their fiery slogans and chants.

We are revolting on misconceptions and false convictions. It is a revolution to correct our sight – to remove the film that has blinded our eyes and hearts.

Syria needs compassion… before freedom.

If we were not compassionate towards each other, the purpose of the revolution becomes null. But that isn’t possible. After all that I’ve lived through for the past weeks, when my hometown became a home for all the families leaving their homes seeking fragile safety, I touched compassion in the eyes of everyone I saw. My grandma’s house, which always welcomed people in happy occasions, now fits entire families seeking shelter. I felt that compassion has been reawakened after a long sleep and I’ve lived the diversity that people have carried from their various regions: different cultures, different opinions, different dialect.

But what surprised me the most was their resiliency and how fast they got accustomed to their new situation – not only because we helped them but because they wanted to.

Syria – that painting that had dust settle on its stones, so meticulously built one top of the other, for years is now dusting it off… finally.